Abstract
Althusser's essay on ideology revived Marxist analyses of ideology, and charted a path for their further development. Michel Pecheux's Language, Semantics and Ideology is undoubtedly the most imaginative attempt to develop Althusser's sketch of theory of ideology. The first part of the paper deals with Pecheux, and goes on to show that his reformulation of the category of interpellation in Althusser leads in the end to the dissolution of the category of ideology itself. This is not a failure but a symptom of the fundamental difficulties which beset the problem of ideology as it has been posed. The second section of the paper is devoted to an examination of the implications of Foucault's analyses for the discussions of ideology.
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